


Family Fun Day

by anistarrose



Series: Stanuary 2019 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Stangst, Stanuary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 12:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: “Grunkle Stan, why do you want tobondwith us all of a sudden?”Now, there’s a good question.





	Family Fun Day

**Author's Note:**

> Time to kick off a new year — and a new year means Stanuary! Written for Week 1’s theme, Love/Bonding.

“Grunkle Stan, why do you want to _bond_ with us all of a sudden?”

Now, there’s a good question. Why _does_ he want to go fishing with these kids so desperately, when just two weeks ago he couldn’t believe he’d gotten talked into taking care of them for a whole summer?

Maybe, he thinks, it’s for the same reason he can never be too hard on Soos when the kid makes some goofy mistake — because there aren’t a lot of people in his life who look up to him with that genuine admiration and interest, like Mabel did all throughout her first day in Gravity Falls.

_“Ohmygosh, Grunkle Stan! This town is so beautiful and cozy! And you must know all about it! Can you give us a guided tour?”_

Maybe it’s for the same reason he puts up with Wendy’s sarcasm and constant shirking of her responsibilities — because he likes having someone stand up to him and snark at him, like Dipper did from the second he stepped inside the Mystery Shack.

 _“Yeesh, does this seriously pass for an actual giant’s ear? I can see thumbprints in the clay! I can’t believe anyone_ buys into _these exhibits — or buys the stuff in the gift shop, for that matter.”_

Maybe it’s because the only real reason he was worried about taking care of the kids was because he didn’t want them to keep him from working on the portal, but now that he knows it’s easy to sneak into the basement while they sleep in the attic, he’s just happy to finally have a chance to get to know them. He’s just happy to have something to think about _besides_ the portal, and making enough money to pay for the supplies he needs to fix it. He’s just happy to have something to _live_ for that isn’t fixing an old mistake.

Or maybe it’s because he sees something familiar in Dipper’s nerdiness and Mabel’s enthusiastic weirdness, something that he’s desperate to cling to because he thought he’d lost it long ago. Maybe it’s because of the easy familiarity between the twins, the good-natured bickering and playful punches to the shoulder that Stan realizes he was starting to _forget_ about, the memories having almost faded away after forty-odd years.

But of course he can’t exactly tell the kids most of that, so he just answers with something about the guys at the lodge and slaps hats onto Dipper and Mabel’s heads. He hasn’t sewn in a long time, and when he did it usually was more about functionality than actual appearances, but he thinks the hats look nice. He thinks it’s the type of gesture the kids could appreciate, especially Mabel.

So when the kids and Soos leave him, it’s like a punch to the gut.

When they leave him, he almost regrets not being a little more honest with his answer, honest about how much going fishing with his family meant to him, even if he couldn’t have been honest about _why_.

When they leave him, and he finds himself in a ramshackle boat with the words _Stan O’ War_ scrawled on the side, it's hard not to listen to that defeatist part of him, the part of him that’s been growing more and more vocal with each passing year. The part of him saying this is just a sign of what’s to come.

 _This is how the whole summer is gonna go. The kids ignoring you, and Ford still lost in who knows what kind of living nightmare — if he’s even_ survived _this long. You couldn’t form a lasting “bond” with any of your relatives to save your life, Stanley._

_Not that you deserve them anyway._

But two hours later — two hours of bad jokes and lost bait and lake police encounters and talking ~~apologizing~~ to his reflection ~~to Ford~~ , just when Stan’s thinking that not even fishing up his weight in gold could salvage this day — _the kids come back_. Battered and sweating and riding a half-sunk craft that’s hardly even recognizable as a boat anymore, they come back. 

Then they _apologize_ , and let him teach them everything he knows about fishing — which, of course, also ends up involving stealing. So they have to interrupt the fishing to flee from the lake police a couple different times, but that’s the best part if you ask Stan.

Eventually, he can’t help himself. Struggling to contain a smug grin, he asks: “Hey kids, what’s with you wanting to _bond_ with your grunkle all of a sudden?”

Dipper and Mabel both grin sheepishly, unable to answer.

Maybe Stan wouldn’t mind the rest of the summer going like today did, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are welcomed as always!
> 
> Fun fact: I initially planned to write something set in the summer of 2013, where Ford joined the others for another fishing expedition, but it ended up not feeling Stan-centric enough. I definitely filed the idea away for future use, though ;)


End file.
